from the maybe-the-ifpi-should-withdraw-from-china dept

One of the biggest reasons why Baidu has been so popular in China is because it helps people find music to download. Of course, it mostly finds unauthorized tracks, and once Baidu became a public company, the lawsuits quickly followed. Baidu won, but the record labels/IFPI sued again. However, once again, it appears to be for naught, as a court has ruled in favor of Baidu, saying that just linking to infringing content isn't infringing itself, and pointing out that the IFPI failed to point to a specific site that was actually hosting the infringing content. While I think that the basic reasoning behind the ruling (just linking to infringing content shouldn't be considered infringing) makes sense, there actually is a fair amount of evidence that Baidu is a lot more involved in actually hosting and hiding the content itself. Of course, you also have to wonder how much the fact that Baidu is a Chinese company, and the IFPI represents foreign labels, played into the way this has turned out. Perhaps the IFPI could take a page from Google's book and "leave" China as well.

from the head-to-china dept

China's largest search engine, Baidu, has had a reputation from very early on as being a source for downloading infringing music and movies. In fact, in 2005 when the company went public, many in China claimed that the availability of music and movies was why Baidu was so popular. In fact, we wondered if by going public, it would put pressure on the company to block those links. Later evidence suggested that Baidu was heavily involved in promoting unauthorized content (potentially even hosting it itself). And while the company has promised to remove links, they seem to reappear almost immediately (and only indexed by Baidu). Not surprisingly, Baidu has been sued many times for copyright infringement.

However, one such case, brought in the US was recently dismissed for lack of jurisdiction. The plaintiff claimed that Baidu could be sued in the US because it was listed on NASDAQ, but the court found nothing to support that and dismissed the entire complaint.

from the in-the-future,-we'll-miss-more-stuff dept

We noted that the Chinese government had called out a bunch of search engines for allowing access to porn recently, and I find it amusing to see that pretty much all of the search engines called out have issued apologies. What I'm wondering is exactly what are they apologizing for? The fact that other people put pornography online? The fact that they're too good as search engines and are able to find that content?

from the fix-it-yourselves dept

It's well known that the Great Firewall censorship brigade in China employs tens of thousands of people monitoring what's said across the internet -- but perhaps far more effective has been the fear factor imposed on various ISPs by the government threatening them with punishment, if they don't ban unacceptable content. Of course, the government doesn't define what exactly is unacceptable, leading the ISPs to over-ban in order to protect themselves. Mostly, this effort has focused on internet access providers, but it looks like the government is now expanding it to search engines as well, after the government publicly named and shamed both Google and Baidu for failing to prevent access to "undesirable" content such as pornography.

This may prove to be an interesting test for Google, which was widely criticized for its original move into China, whereby it agreed to block content as designated by the Chinese government -- while alerting users to the fact that the content is blocked. That was Google's way of striking a compromise, while trying to call attention to the censorship (perhaps in the hope that it would eventually cause the policy to be changed). However, if Google is now getting pressure to be more proactive in determining what's "unacceptable," rather than just blocking specific content designated by the government, things could get a lot trickier for Google. Of course, some might point out that this was the slippery slope that Google put itself on when it first made the deal to get into China.

from the interesting-strategy dept

Many people have noted over the years that with all of the effort that China has put into its Great Firewall, the country hasn't done much of anything to crack down on unauthorized file sharing. In fact, at times, it's almost seemed to encourage it. So some people were a bit surprised to find out that China's censors tried blocking traffic to various well known BitTorrent sites, such as Mininova, isoHunt and The Pirate Bay. However, what may be most interesting is that rather than blocking them outright, it appears that the system just redirects all that traffic to popular Chinese search engine Baidu.

This would be the same Baidu that first became really popular when China shifted all Google traffic to its site, and also the site that stayed popular because it made it easy to download unauthorized music. This would be the same Baidu that was also recently exposed to be fairly complicit in the music downloads it offers, potentially hosting the content itself through a revolving series of ever-changing domains. So, this hardly seems like an attempt by the Chinese government to crack down on unauthorized file sharing -- but an attempt to drive it all to a local company. It looks like the redirects only lasted for a few days, and are no longer in place -- but if the past is any indication, those redirects may come back at any time.

from the not-so-much-of-an-innocent-bystander dept

More than three years ago, when Chinese search engine Baidu first filed to go public, we noted that it's huge advantage over Google in China appeared to stem from its very popular music download search engine -- and we wondered if going public would force that to go away, potentially damaging the company's bottom line significantly. In fact, we were surprised that it appeared that the investors in the site hadn't done much due diligence to understand what was going on. The recording industry wasted little time in suing Baidu. While Baidu won the first case on a technicality and quickly sued again.

At first, this did seem like a typical situation seen with other online search engines, such as The Pirate Bay or even Google, where it's not really clear how Baidu could stop the searches for unauthorized music. However, a new investigative report by The Register found evidence that suggests Baidu is actually a lot more involved in the music download business than it lets on. Specifically, the search results mostly link to a mysterious network of sites that are only reachable via Baidu searches. You can't just go to the sites directly. The sites themselves have a long (and potentially growing) list of random domain names such that the songs constantly move around, and any time Baidu receives a "takedown" it can claim it complied, while the music almost immediately shows back up on the next domain in the list. Also, Baidu almost never links to other, legitimate, download sites -- preferring to point people to these sites that are unreachable outside of Baidu instead.

All in all, it certainly sounds like Baidu is a lot more involved in providing the actual downloads than it would as just a search engine.

That said, The Register's report includes a variety of unsupported statements about how this has "destroyed" economic activity in the music business. As we've seen, the music business has actually adapted to the expectation that the music itself is free in China. I recognize that it's popular for the RIAA and IFPI to make claims about how downloading is destroying the music industry, but you would think that the Register would know better.

from the you-must-block-all-of-these-pictures dept

Over the last few weeks, there's been a big scandal in Hong Kong concerning photos of certain celebrities caught in various states of undress and various "adult" activities. The police in Hong Kong have had some trouble dealing with this, apparently first claiming that anyone possessing these images was breaking the law and then bungling an investigation into who leaked the images. Now, to top that off, the Chinese government is "censuring" the popular search engine Baidu for allowing people to find these controversial images. It's not entirely clear how the government expects Baidu to simply know that these pictures are illegal and to stop people from finding them, but as we've seen, that's the method by which the Chinese government enforces its censorship -- not by explicitly stating what needs to be banned, but by telling search engines and ISPs that they'll get in trouble if they allow anything "bad" to get through. That leads to aggressively blocking anything that the ISPs or search engines feel might get them in trouble. Of course, to make that work, the government occasionally does need to publicly scold some of the firms for failing, even in doing the impossible, as that gives increased motivation for everyone else to just keep on blocking stuff.

from the keep-on-suing dept

Back in December, Alibaba, the Chinese search engine also known as Yahoo China, lost a lawsuit from the recording industry, claiming that the search engine facilitated the downloading of unauthorized content. It's no secret that part of the reason why Alibaba and Baidu have been able to succeed in China is that they're pretty blatant in helping people find content to download. What was strange, though, was at the same time that Yahoo/Alibaba was found guilty, Baidu was found not guilty of copyright infringement, upholding an earlier decision. However, despite having lost the case, it appears that the major record labels have simply turned around and sued Baidu yet again for copyright infringement. Unfortunately, the Reuters writeup doesn't get into the history of the earlier cases (one of which ended just over a month ago) to explain why the labels can simply turn around and sue again, despite having just lost a nearly identical case.

from the how-dare-they! dept

A while back, we had pointed out that the success of a few Chinese search engines wasn't necessarily that they were any better than their counterparts -- but that because they were pretty explicit in helping people find downloadable music. Baidu was famous for this -- and we wondered if the company's move to go public would force a crackdown on such activities. Indeed, soon after Baidu went public in the US, it got sued. However, eventually the courts found that it was not guilty -- but because of the way the copyright laws were worded. Simple solution: a little pressure from the recording industry and... voila: new laws. So, with those new copyright laws in place, the IFPI went after Alibaba, who also happens to run Yahoo China. And, with those new laws in place, Alibaba has now been found guilty of copyright infringement for providing easy to find links to downloadable music (not hosting the music, just linking to it). Not surprisingly, the recording industry pulls out its favorite adjective, calling the win "significant." Given all of these "significant" wins, and the fact that the recording industry's future keeps getting bleaker and bleaker, while file sharing (and the rest of the music industry) continues to grow, I'm beginning to think that the industry maybe does not really know what that word means.